The sheep were seen later that day making their way
home, all raddled with new keel with which Millar had marked them in a
small "stell" which he had passed when the ewes were first collected.
"Faking" the brands, Millar confessed, used to be done by him and his
master on a Sunday, in the vault of a neighbouring old peel tower, and
at a time when everyone else was at church. It was easy enough, without
exciting suspicion, to run the sheep into the yards on a Saturday night,
and thence to the vaults, and no one would ever see the work of
altering the buists going on, for "Yarrow" sat outside, and always, by
barking, gave timely notice of the approach of any undesirable person.
The report was current in the country after the executions that the dog
was hanged at the same time as his master, a rumour probably originated
by the hawking about Edinburgh streets of a broadside, entitled the
"Last Dying Speech and Confession of the Dog Yarrow." In reality
"Yarrow" was sold to a farmer in the neighbourhood of Peebles, but,
strange to say, though as a thief he had been so supernaturally clever,
as a dog employed in honest pursuits his intelligence was much below the
average. Perhaps he was clever enough to be wilfully stupid; or maybe he
had become so used to following crooked paths that the straight road
seemed to him a place full of suspicion and dread.
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